Fiji probes party registration irregularities

Three separate investigations have been launched in Fiji into alleged irregularities in the party registration process.

The police, the regime's anti-corruption agency and the political party registrar are probing claims that people impersonating government officials were collecting signatures for an unnamed party ahead of last Thursday's decreed deadline for existing parties to re-register.

While it's known that the Labour Party and the National Federation Party filed applications, the registrar says an application has been made by a third party whose name she says she cannot release yet.

Meanwhile, the regime refuses to say when it will release its draft constitution, which by decree has to be finalised by the third week of March.

After dumping the document of the Constitution Commission, the interim prime minister said his legal team would have a new one, once he returned from a visit to the UN in New York last month.

This has not happened and Commodore Frank Bainimarama has now gone to France to look at the new Airbus jet which the national airline is expected to get next month.